Is Link Building Pretty Much Irrelevant Now?
-
When I ask this, I am not under the illusion that links do nothing. I am more curious if from an SEO strategy perspective is executing a link building campaign a really unwise use of time and resources? Currently my company literally has every single one of our SEO clients ranked on page 1 rank 1 for their most high value keyword and in the top 5 results for another 5 to 10 high value keywords. we have almost done no link building for these clients. I mean we have established a handful of really good links, but thats it. I look at some competitors link profiles and they have hundreds yet our clients sites are outranking them.
I am almost at the point of not implementing link building initiatives. I mean we will still establish high quality links as they naturally present themselves, but as far as investing time and resources building links i am leaning towards not even doing that anymore or atleast for a while to see what the effect will be.
We seem to find better results when we spend our time building great additional pages and following all web best practices.
Just curious as to what other think?
Thanks SEOmoz Community!
-
Build links to your blog post, not to your home page. Also, I use Hootsuite to put the same blog post one rotation, ie I tweet,fb, g+ the same post multiple times.
I guess maybe I have an unfair advantage in that I market a site that already has authority. There are many subjects in the webinar on this. The webinars are included in your SEOMOZ subscription: http://www.seomoz.org/webinars
-
The responses to this question have been great. While I have written some very good content, I have learned that "if you build it, they will come" doesn't necessarily apply to writing content.
My question is, once the content is written, what are the best ways of getting it "out there?"
-
it's not one that I would recommend to a client or present as a link building strategy
I agree, I would not recommend it to most clients because most clients are not able to produce best-on-the-web content. If they are producing pedestrian content this approach is not going to work.
SEO is about accelerating and amplifying that process for maximum results.
I agree here too. I could make more money by promoting the articles, but I would rather spend my time producing content.
Once you have hundreds or even thousands of high quality pages on your site then you have a level of momentum that would be hard to reproduce with linkbuilders - especially after they have been working for a few years and picked all of the low-hanging links.
-
I have a hard time selling the "pay me to make friends in your industry" bit, so I hardly do it for clients anymore either. Making content for clients is a tangible asset that is
A. Easier to sell
B. A great long-term strategy on its own
-
I'm sure that's a strategy that can work over time, but it's not one that I would recommend to a client or present as a link building strategy.
Great content attracts links and improve in rankings over time. That's the way the web works. SEO is about accelerating and amplifying that process for maximum results.
-
LOL! I haven't done link building in over 1 year. Once in a while I'll write a guest blog post with a link pointing back, but about once per month.
I weathered all Panda and Penguin updates. I still get links from other companies, but I don't make much effort building links.
What you are saying happens exactly to me.
-
I've not done any linkbuilding for five or six years.
I publish content that is usually one of the best pages on the web for its topic. Those pages rank deep in the SERPs at first but slowly climb and in a year I check and they are often at or near the top of the SERPs.
Each one of those pages pulls in more daily traffic and as you get more pages up, more people see your stuff and that gets you exposure for likes, links, tweets, stumbles, etc.
It is really really slow to get that started but once you do it builds its own momentum.
-
WEBBY! Nice topic. Let me share something. My clients have great rankings too. Yes there is always room for improvement, but how much? Get a REAL Google Analytics report to uncover opportunity.
In addition, look at your incoming traffic. I told my clients that I have to stop being so dependent on Google because a change in their algorithm can cause a dip in traffic. I started changing focus from link building to relationship building. Some call it community building, some build their Fabebook/Twitter account. I help individuals and try getting them to grow so I can get my clients repeat business. That's the key on my end, repeat business.
-
It depends on what you mean by "link building".
If you're talking about going out and submitting your site to directories, commenting on blogs & forums, getting profile links, or otherwise manually "building" links in any shape or form, that is probably not the best use of your time (although some of those tactics can still work in moderation).
But there are still plenty of high value link building tactics. Having good content is great, but it won't do anything for your if people don't know about it. Putting that content in front of key bloggers & influencers in order to drive traffic and links is link building, and very much relevant. Forming partnerships with other top sites in your niche and linking to each other is good link building. Guest posting on high authority sites is good link building. Sending targeted press releases to journalists to get news mentions is good link building.
You're right that quality beats quantity when it comes to links, but you still need some kind of strategy to go about acquiring those high value links that goes beyond "building additional great pages". That's link building.
-
Hi Webby,
Interesting observation there. I've been doing very little link building and my clients also rank well. I am relatively new to the industry so I cant really offer much input. However, your post makes me feel better as I was noticing the very same thing. I'd like to hear what others have to say.
Thanks for posting this question.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Importance of external links in 2018
How important are external links in 2018. How much of a percentage do they represent when deciding to rank a page. I imagine it depends on the query but I was wondering it if 10 % of of 60 % ? My feeling is that with good content you can get on almost any query on the 1 st page without links because that would be too penalising to small business if they had no possibility to rank with just content. Looking forward to getting some feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics2 -
Which links to disavow?
I've got a new client that just fired their former SEO company, which was building spammy links like crazy! Using GSC and Majestic, I've identified 341 linking domains. I'm only a quarter of the way through the list, but it is clear that the overwhelming majority are from directories, article directories and comment spam. So far less than 20% are definitely links I want to keep. At what point do I keep directory links? I see one with a DA of 61 and a Moz spam score of 0. I realize this is a judgement call that will vary, but I'd love to hear some folks give DA and spam numbers. FWIW, the client's DA is 37.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rich.owings0 -
Spammy Inbound Links
Hello, We have been using Zendesk to manage our customer support tickets for approx 2 years. We recently noticed that the attached forum had lot's of spam comments attached to it. Promoting Viagra and the like. The system was installed as a subdomain of my site support.mysite.com We have since deleted our account with Zendesk but Moz and Google are reporting loads of inbound links to that subdomain that are all total spam with Viagra in the anchor text etc. The subdomain no longer exists and now throws a 404. Can these links still hurt me? Is there other steps I need to take? I have disavowed all the links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | niallfred0 -
How to build links naturally?
Hi, I recently started a website on famous Photoshop images. These are available in the internet, but on different sources, so i gathered them all and made them available in my website. So my content is not unique but it was gathered from different sources and made available in one website. How can i get links naturally? Yes, it is a great content, but how people will know about my site so that they can reblog on their blogs? How can i make the users to reblog my content and get links naturally? Can anyone experienced help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hari10 -
Link Building with a Scholarship
One of my clients is using a scholarship to build links. We have a nofollow PR campaign getting ready to start and are doing some social marketing for the scholarship page on the site. We are also trying to get backlinks from highschools and colleges that link to scholarship opportunities. So far this has been a slow process. Does anybody have any advice for speeding any of this up? Has somebody ever done a campaign like this before? Is there some kind of database with financial aid contact info for a lot of schools? I contact a lot of schools and always tend to get put on the backburner.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Is the Tool Forcing Sites to Link Out?
Hi I have a tool that I wish to give to sites, it allows the user to get an accurate idea of their credit score with out giving away any personal data and with out having a credit search done on their file. Due to the way the tool works and to make the implementation on other peoples sites as simple as possible the tool remains hosted by me and a one line piece of Javascript code just needs to be added to the code of the site wishing to use the tool. This code includes a link to my site to call the information from my server to allow the tool to show and work on the other site. My questions are: Could this cause a problem with Google as far as their link quality goes? - Are we forcing people to give us a backlink to use the tool? (in the eyes of Google) or will Google not be able to read the Javascript / will ignore the link for SEO purposes? Should I make the link in the code Nofollow? If I should make the link a Nofollow any tips on how to make the most of the opportunity from a link building or SEO point of view? Thanks for your help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MotoringSEO0 -
Link Location Still Making That Much Difference?
I got to thinking earlier... I know obviously footer links are always going to be the bottom of the barrel but does the rest of block level analysis still mean as much... I mean, everybody went nuts with getting in-content links only so there's a billion and one badly written spammy blogs with useless content on just for the sake of getting in-content links instead of blogroll/sidebar links. I just wonder if maybe due to that, things might have levelled out a bit for link location and we hadn't noticed... or at least there's not been much discussion over it lately. Thoughts anyone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0 -
Link anchor text: only useful for pages linked to directly or distributed across site?
As a SEO I understand that link anchor text for the focus keyword on the page linked to is very important, but I have a question which I can not find the answer to in any books or blogs, namely: does inbound anchor text 'carry over' to other pages in your site, like linkjuice? For instance, if I have a homepage focusing on keyword X and a subpage (with internal links to it) focusing on keyword Y. Does is then help to link to the homepage with keyword Y anchor texts? Will this keyword thematically 'flow through' the internal link structure and help the subpage's ranking? In a broader sense: will a diverse link anchor text profile to your homepage help all other pages in your domain rank thematically? Or is link anchor text just useful for the direct page that is linked to? All views and experiences are welcome! Kind regards, Joost van Vught
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoostvanVught0